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1. Who directed Beetlejuice?
Tim Burton
Burton had made Pee-wee's Big Adventure and little else when he took it on, and its success got him Batman the following year. The studio disliked the title and pushed for House Ghosts; Burton's own mock suggestion was Scared Sheetless.
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2. Who plays the title character?
Michael Keaton
Keaton is on screen for well under twenty minutes of the film and improvised a good deal of his patter, in a part Sammy Davis Jr had been floated for. Burton cast him again a year later as Batman, over loud objections from fans who knew him only as a comedian.
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3. Who plays Lydia Deetz?
Winona Ryder
Ryder was a teenager with only a couple of films behind her, and Lydia, dressed in black and permanently behind a camera, made her a goth icon for a generation. She came back for the 2024 sequel, with Jenna Ortega as her daughter.
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4. What are the dead couple's names?
Adam and Barbara Maitland
Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin play the Maitlands, a sweet small-town couple whose idea of a vacation is staying home to redecorate. Baldwin was a near-unknown; Davis had just done The Fly. Charles and Delia Deetz are the New Yorkers who buy the house.
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5. What has Adam built in the attic?
A scale model of the town
Adam has built a miniature of Winter River, their Connecticut town, and it is in its tiny graveyard that the Maitlands first find Betelgeuse, lurking at his own grave. The finale plays out in the attic around the same model.
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6. How long are the Maitlands told they must remain in the house?
125 years
The rules say a hundred and twenty-five years, and also that the living usually cannot see the dead, which is why their attempts to scare the Deetzes with sheets and stretched faces go nowhere. They try the front door anyway and find a desert waiting outside.
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7. What causes the Maitlands' deaths?
A car accident on a bridge
They swerve to avoid a dog on the covered bridge outside town and go through the railing into the river, then walk home without realizing anything has happened. The clues are the mirror, which no longer shows them, and the fire Adam cannot feel.
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8. What book appears to explain their situation?
Handbook for the Recently Deceased
The book turns up on the table the moment they get home, and reads, as Adam complains, like stereo instructions. Their caseworker, when they finally reach her, has little patience for people who have not done the reading.
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9. How many times must his name be said to summon Betelgeuse?
Three
Saying it three times is also how to send him back, which is how the Maitlands get rid of him the first time. Beetlejuice is how the name appears in the title and on his advertising; the character is spelled Betelgeuse, like the star.
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10. What does Betelgeuse call his line of work?
Bio-exorcism
His pitch is that he rids the dead of the living, and he first reaches the Maitlands through a tacky television commercial. His price, it turns out, is marrying Lydia, which would free him to roam among the living for good.
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11. What is the name of the Maitlands' caseworker?
Juno
Juno runs the afterlife's social services from a waiting room full of people who died badly, smoking through the slit in her throat, and she admits that Betelgeuse was once her assistant. Sylvia Sidney, a star of the 1930s, plays her.
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12. Who plays Delia Deetz?
Catherine O'Hara
O'Hara came out of SCTV and plays Delia as a sculptor whose work the house itself seems to resent; the sculptures grab her in the finale. She met the film's production designer, Bo Welch, on set and married him, and reunited with Burton for Frankenweenie.
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13. Which song takes over the dinner party?
Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)
The possessed dinner party lip-syncs Harry Belafonte's calypso recording while their shrimp cocktails turn into hands and grab them by the face. Burton uses Belafonte again at the end, when Lydia floats up the stairs to Jump in the Line.
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14. What huge creatures threaten the Maitlands outside their ghostly home?
Sandworms
Stepping outside the house drops the Maitlands onto Saturn, where striped sandworms with a second head inside the first patrol the dunes. One of them is Lydia's deliverance at the end, when Barbara rides it in through the roof to swallow Betelgeuse.
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15. Which Academy Award did Beetlejuice win?
Best Makeup
Ve Neill, Steve LaPorte and Robert Short won for the moldy face, the shrunken heads and the waiting-room casualties, and it was the film's only nomination. Burton kept working with Neill through Edward Scissorhands and Batman Returns.
